It is happening again. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the 10 days of Teshuva— repentance— are upon us once more. While many of us are taking stock of another year gone by, contemplating our acts and wondering how we can be better people in the year to come, I want to suggest something perhaps unexpected: Watch Twin Peaks. Every mystifying second of it.

25 years after its cancellation, Twin Peaks was resurrected this past summer for an 18 episode limited run. Appropriately named “The Return,” like most viewers I took the revival’s title to be nothing more than acute self awareness on the part of the writers. The show has returned! Yay! But, it quickly became clear that the title of the show was signaling more than just a celebration of its own resurrection. Twin Peaks: The Return is about the very nature of returning. How do we do it? What do we even do to return? With the High Holiday season in mind, it is easy to think that the show could have instead been titled Twin Peaks: Teshuva.

Twin Peaks addresses Teshuva from two distinct angles. The first is by telling the story of our hero Agent Dale Cooper returning from the Black Lodge (an extra-dimensional place of evil) to our plane of existence. As we watch Cooper readjust to the world, as Lynchian and weird as his circumstances are, it seems reminiscent difficulties each one of us have in returning to God, to our families, and to our friends after we have gone astray. When we see our gallant hero comically bumble through life under his new identity of Dougie Jones, we see just how easy it is to lose our way and forget that there was ever something noble we strove for. When we see the once commanding Agent Cooper being mindlessly pushed through life by his wife, his boss, and his coworkers, it should make us wonder if we are still the masters of our lives, or if life is dictating our paths for us. When Cooper wistfully reaches out for a police officer’s badge, a symbol of the life he once lived, it should make us calls out: “Wake up Cooper! Wake up! You’re so close.” I imagine that God often cries out for us to do the same.

Of course, Agent Cooper isn’t the only one returning to Twin Peaks. We, the viewers, are as well. However, the world we encounter now is startlingly different from the one we were introduced to over two decades ago. The Twin Peaks we left was filled with captivating raw emotion and teeming with life. Whether it was the confused feelings of angst, lust, and romance of teenage youth, the goofy and quirky charm of the community’s many eccentric characters, or the nightmarish horrors bubbling beneath the surface of the innocent town, the original Twin Peaks always felt alive in a way that was both unsettlingly and accessibly real. The Twin Peaks we return to, though, is one that all too often feels sterile and cold. Sex is used to assert power or, for the banality of obtaining moments of selfish pleasure. Characters no longer stare out contemplatively into the moonlit forests; instead they gaze blankly at their computer screens. And it is silent. So silent. Gone are the lively jazz accompaniments or the rising musical refrains. The sound of Twin Peaks: The Return is mostly a barren stillness that leaves us constantly wondering where the warmth of this plane has gone.

It’s easy to reduce Twin Peaks to a cynical take on nostalgia. That we can’t ever return to the world that was, and oh— by the way, that world never existed in the first place. But like all good art it’s more nuanced and complicated than that. Just because we can’t return to that world, doesn’t mean that we can’t return to ourselves. We may lose our innocence, but that doesn’t mean we have to lose our goodness and be corrupted by the grayness of life’s journey.

This third season of Twin Peaks serves as an 18 hour meditation on the journey of return. It can be baffling and confusing, and truth be told the show often seems to have no internal logic or any semblance of a coherent plot line. But that’s OK. Too often we are looking for clues and signs in an attempt to figure out an order to the world. To treat the High Holiday season the same would be a tragedy. Teshuva should not be reduced to a transaction with God – that with enough prayer and good deeds God will tear up that bad decree and reward us with a good one in the year to come. If nothing else, Twin Peaks reminds us that at this time of year it is most important to give ourselves over to an emotional logic, to take the time to embrace the powerful symbols around us and submit to the feelings they evoke.  That’s how we return. As the Torah teaches, Teshuva is not hidden in the heavens or distantly across the sea. Rather, the power to return is found within each of us. It’s in crisp suits, cherry pie so good it’ll kill you, and a damn fine cup of coffee.

You may be far away.
So listen to the sounds.
You will find your way back.
To a place that is both.
Wonderful and Strange.

Shana Tova.

Photo via Showtime

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I moved to New York a bit over six years ago. My aunt and uncle live here, but they aren’t Jewish, so I was left without anyone with whom I could spend the High Holy Days. When I was in college, I would go to the Hillel meals, but since that only covered one meal, I started organizing meals at restaurants for my friends and I to try. I have been to a bunch, but I always go back to my old standby Jack’s Wife Freda. But while that might be my favorite, New York City is full of great Jewish restaurants to have your festive meals. For this list, I have avoided the expected choices like Katz’s and 2nd Avenue Deli. This is all about that new Jew Food.

Jack’s Wife Freda–  224 Lafayette Street or 50 Carmine Street

Jack’s Wife Freda is the perfect place to go for a hip (not kosher) Rosh Hashanah meal — or let’s be honest: any meal. They do a festive menu for both the first and second nights of Rosh Hashanah, with apples and honey on the table along with some challah. It’s hyper instagrammable so I highly recommend making a reservation. And if you would like to see me, I will be there on night two.

Mile End Delicatessen- 53 Bond Street

If you are looking for a Montreal-style Deli then you have come to the right place. I usually go there for their poutine, but they are offering a pretty amazing prix fixe for Rosh Hashanah. For seventy-five dollars (thirty-five for kids under 12) you get a lovely seven course meal that includes a shaved apple salad that sounds divine. And what New Year would be complete without brisket! They will be serving this menu for both the first and second nights of Rosh Hashanah.

Russ and Daughters Cafe–  127 Orchard Street

I am obsessed with Russ and Daughters! Their babka french toast is, as my mom would say, the bomb dot squad and I would highly recommend getting it for dessert. If you can’t make it in for a festive meal, they are still taking catering orders, so you can bring some Russ and Daughters home with you! For Rosh Hashanah they will be offering a special of gravlax with apples and honey served on rye bread.  

Shalom Japan- 310 South Fourth Street, Williamsburg

Shalom Japan is the perfect spot for the festive meal if you are feeling something more off the beaten path but still amazing. Their tagline is “Authentically inauthentic Jewish and Japanese food in South Williamsburg from chefs Aaron Israel and Sawako Okochi.” I spoke to co-owner Aaron Israel early this week, and he told me about some very exciting specials. For example: They will be serving bass cheek with mushrooms. To fulfill the apples and honey requirement of the meal, they will be serving roasted honey and garlic duck breast surrounded by apples and Brussels sprouts.

L’Shana Tova! Good luck getting a reservation to get your Rosh Hashanah nosh on.

Image of Jack’s Wife Freda dish via Instagram.

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I own hardly any white clothes, a fact that took me by surprise, once again, last Kol Nidre.

This is equal parts vanity and common sense: white is a color that highlights your shape; it emphasizes largeness and form. And in New York City, where I live, every surface is dusted with low-grade filth.

I owned one pair of white jeans that rode too low and never came out clean, no matter how I washed them. I had one sheer jersey dress, an ill-fitting gift that I couldn’t face throwing away. So come Yom Kippur morning last year I trotted them out, cobbling together an outfit. My giant tallit covered the rest. I looked ridiculous, but that was the price I had to pay for my failure to plan, I told myself. Next year, I promised, I’d get my act together in advance. I made a lot of promises that week.

Draping oneself in humble whites on Yom Kippur has been a traditional Jewish custom for millennia. It’s also the custom of the exuberant, neo-traditional-hippie Jewish community that I gravitated towards in adulthood. While I do not own a kittel (the white burial robe that men traditionally wear on their wedding day and Yom Kippur), I like the gravity of donning a garment with the weight of death; the effacement of self-expression when approaching divine judgment. But the notion of purity—so central to the Yom Kippur prayer service—that’s harder for me to swallow.

Last month, I listened to one of my favorite rabbis singing selichot, the penitential prayers offered before the high holy days. With his studied persuasiveness, in a gravely voice that gets me every time, he offered his annual plea: Do something to prepare yourself for the Days of Awe. Don’t let the holidays creep up on you. Do the spiritual work.

I do not believe that the work he envisioned was online dress shopping, but that is exactly what I did as soon as I got home—until 1AM. I was dismayed to find scores of white dresses at full price after Labor Day. (Are no sartorial traditions sacred anymore?) I recalled my ambivalence while white dress shopping for my wedding, the appalling 600 percent markup on anything a bride might consider wearing. Same symbolism: death, rebirth, purity, humility. They are very expensive symbols.

And there were so many ways to sort and filter the results! White, of course. Not short, maybe long or mid-length? The thought floated through my mind that this was perhaps not the type of work that would best serve my most sincere repentance. But imagining myself embodied on Yom Kippur was weirdly helpful. What would it be like to slip this dress over my head or zipper it up? How would the fabric feel on my skin? I rejected outfits if I didn’t think I could move freely in them, or ones that looked itchy. With this time investment, at least I’d get to skip the nagging guilt of failing to prepare.

Except that I found nothing. I filtered until there was nothing left. Everything was too short, or too cleavage-enhancing, or made of some unearthly polyester. These dresses were not designed for a solemn occasion, for beating one’s chest or praying through tears.

I thought about the time a few years back when I tried to do the Great Aleinu—the full prostration—in high heels and a very reasonable skirt. I remembered being totally distracted by my clothes, and how I had obviously not done the work—the unglamorous, practical work—of making sure that I could pray the way I wanted to. My body’s shelter, inside my community’s shelter, was totally ill-suited for the task.

One Yom Kippur when I had just moved west, I attended a Jewish Renewal service in Oakland. One congregant in particular caught my eye. She was standing up, swaying, arms pointing heavenward, and full-throat singing literally the whole time. I don’t know what she was on, but I wanted some. Her flowing caftan housed her corpulence, and I realized that she was free to really be in her body. It was hers—and God’s—to see. I wondered if that was what it was like to be invisible and also really, truly seen and present.

With no acceptable white dresses online, I went to H&M, and was immediately overstimulated by the ritual thud of dance music. But in the clothing-to-junk cycle of seasonal fashion, there were no more white dresses. I had not prepared early enough. Thumbing through racks, I thought about how nobody seemed interested in selling women clothing for solemn occasions; clothing for simply being present in our bodies—as opposed to being gazed upon by judges, male and female. It seemed so obvious. Obviously nobody wants to sell me that.

When I was a kid, we looked really nice on the High Holidays. This was my mother’s rule, and her mother’s. No runs in stockings. Nothing scuffed or stained or ill-fitting from last year. The clothes weren’t white, but they were pristine and considered in advance. It wasn’t spiritual per se, but it was a big deal and the community custom.

I remember visiting that congregation during college. A teenager was wearing a barely-there fuchsia and black party dress with spaghetti straps. She looked miserable. I preferred to imagine that the misery preceded the dress, a spirited teenage protest. She wasn’t allowed to skip services, but she could wear that dress. Or perhaps she felt miserable because she realized she’d committed an etiquette misstep.

I was not offended by her dress or her body, but I wondered how she felt, if she was conscious of others’ eyes on her, or perhaps blissfully unaware. I wondered if her dress helped her get what she wanted out of that service or that day, if it helped her do her work.

I was never much moved by the soul of that suburban temple. But I did notice that we’d all shown up, even those of us who probably would not return for another year. The room contained a kernel of somber optimism, a desire to hold for a moment the belief that with the work, one can find in oneself a fresh heart. That our days can be renewed. God knows, we can’t do it alone.

Back on the internet, I lowered my standards. I found myself considering my shopping filters and realized that they described some odd form of modesty, a concept I hold with profound suspicion. I think of modesty as a construct, a matrix of community norms—people looking at other people, and women worrying about what other people think we look like. There is so little I can do about this. I can maybe control my own feelings, and I can learn better not to project a bunch of baloney onto other people. But my tools to resist unreasonable standards—the same standards that demand me to wear clothes I can’t do my work in—are limited, because I’m a person. I wanted a modest uniform for this day of extreme humility, not to serve someone else’s needs, but to do my work. It’s not exactly that I wanted to be invisible. Rather, I wanted an outfit in which I felt safe revealing the innermost core of myself, beating my chest, shedding my tears, whatever that looks like.

I filtered the results again, optimistically. Mid-length, sure. White or off-white. Natural fibers or natural-looking. The results that popped up were mostly sheer, with peek-holes, or sundresses that would give me a chill. There was nothing left.

The part of me that wanted to look polished, like my mother would strongly recommend, that part of me was not on good terms with the part of me that would like to not be seen, to just buy the damn kittel already. But I couldn’t look good and be unseen at the same time. Wearing the men’s uniform wouldn’t solve this dilemma. It wouldn’t undo the tensions between seeing and being seen, by community, by God, by myself.

So I just bought a dress and accepted its imperfections. It’s not designed to solve my problems. No dresses are. It’s too big. It’s 80/20 cotton/polyester. It was on sale, but not by much. But it has pockets and falls to a comfortable length above my knee. It’s like a boxy house, though it looked more like a stylish and modern house on the model than it does on me. The fabric is thick and spongy, and I’ve been added to the store’s email list, from which there is apparently no unsubscribe. I’m more terrified than ever about my limited capacity to do this work—the real work under the clothes—but this feels like a durable shelter, a start.

(Image by Vanessa P., via Flickr)

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For Jews born in September and early October, birthdays and High Holidays go hand-in-hand. Checking the calendar to see if Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur falls your birthday becomes par for the course. Birthdays might be spent praying or eating apples dipped in honey—or fasting—and festivities are often postponed.

I’m a September baby myself, but Rosh Hashanah has only fallen on my birthday twice. The first occurrence—and I had to look this up—was in 1988, when I turned two. I can’t say I remember it, but I do remember being wished a happy birthday and Shana Tova the second time, in 1999, on my thirteenth birthday. It was a unique day at synagogue; a blend of birthday wishes and Rosh Hashanah ritual. I spent plenty of time with friends during services (we celebrated my bat mitzvah in October).

Philip Wolgin, who lives in Washington, D.C., will be celebrating his birthday as Rosh Hashanah begins on Wednesday. For him, this is nothing new. “My birthday is September 24, so it almost always falls during the chagim,” he wrote in an email. “I’ve never been the biggest birthday person, particularly since mine is so late in the year, pretty much everyone in my class had already had their birthday by the time mine rolled around. Honestly, I don’t mind it.”

Even though Wolgin’s used to having a High-Holy-Birth-Day, one year really stands out, and it was a big one: “My 21st birthday was erev Yom Kippur, so of course that put a bit of a damper in the plans!”

New Yorker Rebecca Eskreis has also had a birthday fall on Yom Kippur. In fact, she has had several. “I’ve been ‘blessed’ with having my birthday, October 9, fall on at least four or five Yom Kippurs (either erev, or the actual holiday),” she explained in an email.

Having experienced a birthday on both “days”of Yom Kippur (Jewish holidays run from sundown to sundown, spanning two days on the calendar), Eskreis, who lives in New York, has come down in favor of a birthday on the day of Yom Kippur, as opposed to the eve. “It’s actually better because after fasting the whole day you can really pig out and have lots of cake without feeling guilty!” she wrote.

While adulthood has led Eskreis to an appreciation of the birthday cake/break-fast correlation, as a kid, she used to view the day differently: “It meant I also got to have the day off from school,” she explained. It’s fair to say there are adults out there who approach the day with similar levels of excitement, even if it’s not their birthday.

A birthday on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur can also mean a chance to spend time with family and friends. Last year, Lindsey Schnitt was delighted when Rosh Hashanah fell unusually early, in the first week of September, coinciding with her birthday. “For me, I am such a big birthday person, but I love being with my family, and I also love this time of year being at Temple,” she said.

“I think I went into services being excited that it was my birthday, not really making the day about me, but it was very special to be alongside people who have known me my entire life,” she explained.

Not everyone likes sharing a birthday with the High Holidays. Tiffany Nassimi’s birthday falls during Rosh Hashanah this year. “You can never celebrate on your birthday,” she wrote in a Facebook message. As for the social media perks of a birthday, “no one ever ends up writing on your [Facebook] wall.” She pointed out that birthday or no birthday, the timing of the High Holidays has always been awkward, given that they fall at the very beginning of the school year. This year, her friends want to take her out after the holiday, “but we’ll see.”

In the end, how you feel about your birthday falling on a High Holiday is pretty much moot point—it’s part of the reality of being a fall baby. Eskreis summed up the experience well: “I don’t look forward to having my birthday fall on [a holiday], but I’ve also learned to make the best of it.” This year at least, she has a reprieve from a Yom Kippur birthday.

As for me: I’m looking forward to my next Rosh Hashanah birthday, but I just checked the calendar and I’ll have to wait until 2018. Until then, honey birthday cake for the other September babies.

(Image: Shutterstock)

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Last year, I compiled a list of literature I felt appropriate for the introspective nature of the High Holidays. Throughout the year, I shul hopped my way around the tri-state area and found a surprising form of synagogue worship: reading throughout the service. Everywhere I went, I found a steady group of people who came to synagogue to read. While some might find this offensive, I found it encouraging. The shul environment is tranquil, calm, and conducive to letting words wash over your mind. In that vein, here are eight more books—new and old—that I find transplant me to a more receptive mindset during these reflective days.

Fiction

Scenes From a Village Life, by Amos Oz

Oz, the elder statesmen of Israeli writers, writes this slim, beguiling state of the union address in the form of interconnected short stories about a fictional town in Israel. Death, decay, and loss pervade these stories that manifest an Israel uncertain of its past and frightened of its future. Yet despite the many dire situations, Oz evinces an infinite love for his homeland, albeit a homeland he sees as lost. Beyond their statement about the health of Israeli culture, these beautiful stories confront essential questions of family, loyalty, and the nature of commitment.

Love’s Executioner, by Irvin Yalom

Yalom is an interesting species of writer. Born Jewish, turned atheist and secularist, Yalom still displays an abiding spirituality in his embrace of existential thinking in psychotherapy. In his most famous book, Love’s Executioner, Yalom shares 10 stories from his therapeutic practice that allow the reader to explore personal fears and insecurities. The introduction itself, a pitch perfect summation of existentialist therapy, justifies the hefty price of the book.

Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes

Barnes’ meditation on memory and missed opportunities will entrance all types of readers. In this short book full of crystalline prose, Barnes weaves the story of Tony, a man in his sixties, looking back and questioning the tidy narrative of his life. In a time devoted to reflection, seeing Tony mine his experiences to understand how he got to the exact point he’s now at will open even the most cynical heart to the possibility of redemption.

Wise Blood, by Flannery O’Connor

One of the legends of 20th century fiction, O’Connor tends to get more notice for her short stories than for her novels. With her characteristic charismatic southern humor and darkness, O’Connor explores religious crises in an often surprising manner in her first novel. Though rooted in Christianity, the story of a young person returning home only to find himself struggling with his religious heritage will appeal to people of various persuasions. O’Connor, in her often mysterious way, makes the case that those who rail against God and those who live with doubt are some of the most religious people.

Gilead, Home, by Marilynne Robinson

Robinson represents one of the last bastions of religious writers. One of the best writers of our generation, she manages to combine some of the finest writing with the deepest religious sentiment. In Gilead, an aging pastor writes a letter to his son about the nature of faith, devotion, and the challenges of modern life. Robinson’s portrayal of religious life represents a true understanding of spiritual struggles and motivation. Home, a sequel of sorts to Gilead, tells the story not from the perspective of a dying pastor, but from the perspective of the prodigal son returning home. Any of her books, whether essay or fiction, would foot the bill for these introspective days, but this one-two punch captures the range of today’s religious experience.

Nonfiction

The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism, by Deborah Baker

Baker writes a stunningly brilliant biography of Maryam Jameelah, previously known as Miriam Marcus, a secular Jew who converted to Islam and became a famous writer of anti-American books in Pakistan. Baker weaves Jameelah’s story from her letters to her parents and others, but eventually Baker widens the book’s scope to investigate the charismatic leader that guided Jameelah’s transition, Mawlana Mawdudi, the divide between Islam and the West, and ultimately, an exploration of Baker herself. She questions her own assumptions about life, civilization, and the limits of knowledge—all while pushing the boundaries of a biography considerably beyond what we may expect from the genre.

In the Valley of the Shadow: On the Foundations of Religious Belief, by James Kugel

Kugel, a renowned biblical critic, explores his beliefs through his experience with cancer. Never one to shy away from the struggles of contemporary Judaism, Kugel seeks, with the mind of an academic and the heart of poet, to find “the starting point of religious consciousness.” He also takes the reader on a journey into the depths of religious experience.

HHhH, by Laurent Binet

We focus so much on the Jewish experience in the Holocaust that we risk forgetting the larger context of the war. Binet masterfully explores a secret mission to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the Butcher of Prague, while considering the nature of courage, heroism, and meaning—crafting an exciting, dramatic, true story. Binet also sheds light on more recent histories of war, genocide, and heroism, acknowledging that these episodes can make us feel our lives are a bit, well, mundane. Binet acutely taps into this epochal insecurity of ours. Often our lives can feel small and insignificant compared to those heroes of previous generations, but Binet also finds redemption in our ability to learn from history.

Previously: Days Of Awe(some) Books: A High Holiday Reading List

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This was the first Rosh Hashanah I didn’t go to shul. I still saw friends, went to meals, dipped the apple in honey more than once, yet I never entered any one of the several minyanim I’ve frequented in the past. I never opened the machzor I’ve been using for years, the one I received free in the mail for a hoped-for donation that I didn’t send. And I never heard the shofar blasts calling me to repentance.

Does this mean I was blameless all year, that I had nothing to repent for? Hardly. It’s just that despite the myriad of rituals, the primary way the Jews I know mark Rosh Hashanah is with an extra-long synagogue service. And I don’t enjoy prayer.

This is not merely a sign of how degenerate I’ve become since leaving Orthodoxy. Prayer, even when I was a full-on believer, was always the most difficult part of Judaism for me. I’ve never been able to sit or stand still and even the most vigorous shokeling, the ritualistic swaying that the religious set do while davening, was never enough to keep boredom at bay. As a child, I was able to leave services without glares of disapproval and would spend hours in the ladies’ room with a friend, swinging from stalls (though I never did giant swings like John Cage did on Ally McBeal) and giving bubbies the scare of their lives when I popped out.

As I got older, I was expected to stay in the women’s section for even longer periods of time as though age had miraculously reformed my twitchy nature. It did no such thing. Throughout the practically daylong Rosh Hashanah services, I’d alternate my foot tapping from one leg to the other and then back again. I would leave my seat as often as possible to get sips of water from the fountain or to visit the restroom. I no longer attempted acrobatics in the stalls. Rather, I engaged in the more teenage-appropriate behavior of checking my hair in the mirror. But after five old ladies entered the bathroom and then left, I felt obligated to return the sanctuary.

Despite these stratagems, there was still left ample time to stew in my seat. Or stand and pray. The worst was mussaf, which translates to “additional service.” The first part is recited to oneself and I did my best to complete it as quickly as possible in order to get a chance at sitting before the even longer repetition portion began. (Woe unto me when I learned at school that I wasn’t supposed to sit down in front of a person still engaged in prayer. I’d stare angrily at the woman behind me who seemed to be taking her sweet time communing with God and seeking blessings for her family. I hated her so much.)

I also engaged in “machzor math” by flipping to the end of the mussaf service to figure out how many pages were left until the final shofar blasts of the day. (As a math-phobic person, this remains the only type of arithmetic I’ve ever been any good at.)

At times, however, I took a grim satisfaction in surviving the service as though I had run some sort of liturgical marathon. Back at school after the holidays, we’d boast to one another about how long our davening lasted. The winners (and losers) were the ones who didn’t get to eat lunch until it was practically time for seniors in Florida to get their early bird specials. (This same sort of competition was applied to Passover seders. Eating dinner before midnight was a sign of impiety.) In Orthodox Judaism, as in my beloved sport of gymnastics, your grit is measured by how much suffering you can endure.

As an adult, I stopped attending Orthodox services. I found congregations that shared my values, from egalitarianism to social justice. There is just one problem—these guys use a liturgy very similar in content and length to the service of my youth. And they really like to sing it out.

Again, I found myself resorting to the same time-killing strategies I used as a kid. I showed up late, got up often to go to the bathroom and get sips of water. I found people to speak to. I rose and sat with the congregation. And I counted how many pages we had to go until we would be free for the day.

When I woke up on Monday morning, I was ready to go through all of it again. I’d show up late and then distract others with mindless chatter. And then I’d distract myself when they’d finally shush me. I’d rise and sit in accordance with the script. Once again I’d hope that instead of ten or twenty minutes of connectedness with the material and the songs, maybe I’d get half an hour this year.

Then I decided to go back to sleep. Perhaps it was pure laziness that kept me in bed for hours with a book and a cup of coffee until it was time to meet my friends for lunch. And it was that, at least in part. But it was also me finally recognizing that prayer wasn’t meant to be my form of spiritual expression and engagement.

On some level, this is surprising. I’m a writer and rabbinic Judaism (as one good rabbi friend once pointed out to me) is a verbal culture. I enjoy text study and can argue for hours. You’d think that prayer, being comprised of a lot words written into books, would also thrill me. But when confronted with the liturgical text, I rarely feel anything in the recitation of it, even amongst a group of friends I love and respect. It mostly leaves me cold.

So what’s the difference between the intellectual discussion that excites me and the prayers that bore me to distraction? It is, in part, the demand for stillness. I’m not a meditative sort and I feel most connected when I’m moving and dancing. But it’s also the rote nature of these lengthy services. What I cherish about literary analysis and debate is that though we are working from a static text, we’re improvising as we argue. For me, spirituality is achieved, however briefly, from constant shifting and changing. I can’t work from a script. (Or remember a beam routine much to my former coach’s chagrin.)

This reminds me, like virtually everything else in life, of a moment from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When Werewolf Oz is asked about Sunnydale High School’s marching jazz band, he explains, “Since the best jazz is improvisational, we’d be going off in all directions, banging into floats…scary.”

Similarly, a standardized davening keeps the congregation together. The unity and cohesion of many voices joining together, saying the same words, is for some an incredibly spiritual experience. I have friends who find great fulfillment and connectedness in the traditional service.

Thankfully, these folks mostly indulge me and my inability to daven. After two years of living in Los Angeles, my friends hosted a Shabbat lunch to bid me farewell. When it came time to bench after the meal, one announced, “I think that because it’s Dvora’s last Shabbat here, we should bench quietly and to ourselves, the way she likes it.” It was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.

Though undoubtedly these friends also find Rosh Hashanah davening overly long—I’ve spied others doing machzor math—they enjoy a good sing-along and get into it. I wouldn’t want anyone to cut it short on my behalf.

Besides, the longer they spend in shul, the more time I get to spend in bed or dancing around my apartment before I meet them for the most Jewish act of all—eating.

(image via Shutterstock)

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Kosher Salt is Jewcy’s monthly comic about life as a blonde-haired, green-eyed, tattooed Jew.

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Elizabeth Simins is a compulsive doodler living in New York. She splits her time between making paintings, being a production designer, and playing pretentious indie video games. She tweets here.

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Our friends at Tablet Magazine have put together a great list of Rosh Hashanah resolutions from a wide range of well-known Jewish figures. Each response offers advice for the coming year and some things for all of us to think about, and do, over the next 12 months.

Here are our five favorites—you can check out the rest over at Tablet.

Dr. Ruth, sex therapist

The one thing you must do in the New Year is pay greater attention to the humans next to you than the gadget in your hand. No matter how much you love your phone, it will never hold your hand or make your heart flutter. If you want to have a productive year, if you want to feel the warmth of human contact, if you want to marry or stay married, have children and get the most that life has to offer, put your gadgets down and connect to those around you with your mind, your arms, and your heart.

Mayim Bialik

The last time I was in Israel was two years ago. I’ve almost gone a few times since then but just have never gotten around to it. This past year has seen an increase in my Jewish learning, observance, and sense of connection to the State of Israel. I had a serious car accident a month ago, and since then I’ve felt a very strong pull to go back to Israel. I would go so far as to say I feel like I need to go to Israel this year to heal from the accident, to heal from a particularly rigorous year emotionally, and to put my feet back on the Land.

Jonathan Ornstein, director of the Jewish Community Center in Krakow, Poland

Go to Auschwitz. Feel sad. Feel angry. Contemplate the unimaginable loss. Weep for the souls of the victims. Say “Never Again.” Then go one hour down the road to Krakow and learn the real lesson of the Holocaust. Go meet a growing, vibrant, optimistic, pluralistic, forward-looking Jewish community that refuses to allow itself to be defined by tragedy—the one community in Europe where it is getting better, safer, and easier to be Jewish every single day. Learn the lesson of the Holocaust that the Krakow Jewish community has learned: The strength of the Jewish People lies in defining ourselves by what we do, not by what is done to us.

Emily Nussbaum, television critic for The New Yorker

My goal this year is to use the word “ham-handed” in a TV review. I also want to cook 4 percent more (I’m a terrible cook), wear eyeliner, buy a bunk bed for my two boys, go see more standup comedy, read something fancy like Montaigne, and convince my husband to grow a mustache. Plus, write notes to people when I admire something they wrote (like Nora Ephron and David Rakoff did) and gossip more.

Joshua Cohen

My New Year’s resolution is straight-ahead: Stop imposing Hallmark® goyisher narrischkeit on Jewish tradition. It isn’t New Year’s. It’s Rosh Hashanah.

Happy 5773, people.

(Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images)

What To Do in 5773 [Tablet Magazine]

The post Rosh Hashanah Resolutions from Mayim Bialik, Dr. Ruth, and more appeared first on Jewcy.

For many families, eating honey cake is a Rosh Hashanah staple, but in my family it wasn’t eaten so much as ignored. I never cared for this particular baked good. I find it heavy and cloyingly sweet. It was a cake I associated with grandparents and shul kiddush leftovers—always left untouched as the crowd thinned and people headed home for lunch. But wherever I went on Rosh Hashanah, people would insist on making and serving this cake because its star ingredient, its namesake, is practically the symbol for Rosh Hashanah. After all, how can you say “l’shana tovah u mitukah”—“to a good and sweet new year”—without honey?

The honey cake originated in Germany around 1320 and was called lekach, coming from the German word for “lick.” Honey was often used as a treat to encourage and entice young yeshiva students in their studies. Early Ashkenazi Jews even made a ceremony out of it with the Aleph-Bazyn: honey was spread on slates containing the Hebrew alphabet and as the young students licked off the honey, the idea was that they were reminded of the sweetness the Torah held. At the end of the ceremony, honey cakes along with other sweets were distributed.

Before the days of refrigeration and plastic cake-savers, honey was also an extremely popular ingredient in cooking and baking because it acted as a preservative and was supposed to ensure a moist cake. Unfortunately, this aspect of the cake—the densely sweet cake that seems to last forever—is not so enticing. To compensate for that, I’ve come up with a version that lightens things up by incorporating the traditional flavor of the honey cake into a chiffon cake, which is leavened by both chemical leaveners and beaten egg whites. The result is a moist, yet light, cake.

To heighten the taste, I paired the cake with a pomegranate glaze, which offers a tangy and fruity counterpoint to the sweetness. Pomegranates are also a traditional Rosh Hashana food because their many seeds are said to number 613, the same as the number of mitzvot found in the Torah. Many people eat them in order to usher in a year filled with good deeds—I eat them because of their deliciously tart seeds that burst with flavor. Sprinkling fresh seeds on top of the glazed cake adds a wonderful texture as well as flavor to the cake.

Unlike its earlier iterations, this honey cake—with its light texture, ruby red glaze, and crunchy pomegranate topping—shouldn’t be ignored. If nothing else, it will help usher in a year filled with scrumptious cakes and tastier shul kiddushes.

Not Your Bubbe’s Honey Cake
8-10 Servings

Ingredients:

Cake:
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
5 eggs, separated
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 tbsp honey-flavored tea (honey chamomile, or honey lemon are also fine), cooled
Zest of half a lemon

Glaze:
2 cups unsweetened pomegranate juice
1/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp orange juice
3 tsp corn starch
Pomegranate seeds for decoration

Special Equipment:

9-inch tube pan or Bundt pan

Directions:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees and grease the pan well.

2. To make the cake, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

3. In a separate bowl, combine the egg yolks and both sugars, mixing well.

4. Add the oil, honey, tea, and lemon zest to the egg yolk mixture.

5. Combine the honey mixture with the flour mixture and set aside.

6. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks, being careful not to over beat them.

7. Add 1/3 of the whites into the flour and honey mixture and combine. Add the next third in carefully, folding the whites in until nearly combined. Add the last 1/3 of the whites, gently folding, being careful not to deflate them.

8. Pour into the prepared pan and put directly into the oven and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until the cake springs back when you touch it.

9. Let cool for 10 minutes, then invert the pan onto a cooling rack and let the cake finish cooling off inverted in the pan. When completely cool, carefully lift the pan to unmold. If you have any difficulty, run a thin knife around the edges of the pan to help the cake out.

10. While the cake is in the oven, make the Pomegranate Glaze. To make the syrup, combine the pomegranate juice sugar, orange juice, and cornstarch in a sauce pot.

11. Bring to a boil then reduce the heat and allow the mixture to simmer. Cook the mixture for about 20 minutes, until it thickens and reduces by half. If necessary, strain the mixture and then allow it to cool.

12. When both the cake and glaze are cool, pour the glaze over the cake and then sprinkle the fresh pomegranate seeds on top.

Also try:

Not Your Bubbe’s Kibbeh Agemono

Not Your Bubbe’s Borscht Salad

Not Your Bubbe’s Deconstructed Baba Ghanoush

The post Not Your Bubbe’s Recipe: Honey Chiffon Cake With Pomegranate Syrup appeared first on Jewcy.

Borscht is a nasty sounding word. With five consonants crushed together at the end, it makes me think of a hearty sneeze or an irate Israeli telling her students to be quiet (shtok!). It’s also nasty by association—how many American-born Jews would say they find oddly bright-colored food appetizing?

In the last few decades, borscht has quietly slipped off the High Holiday menu, but it was once a crucial component of Jewish culinary influence in the United States. Like bagels and whitefish salad, borscht wasn’t associated with Jewish cuisine until throngs of Eastern European Jews arrived on Ellis Island and concentrated on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Initially, this iconic beet soup had nothing to do with beets. As it turns out, the word “borscht” comes from the Old Slavonic word “brsh,” which referred to a soup made of chunks of a white root vegetable. It was basically an “everything in the fridge” soup–bits of vegetables, bones, greens, and anything else lying around. It came from the cold northern regions of Europe, where meals were largely comprised of tough bread and starchy tubers. Gil Marks explains that peasants in this region used “sours”—pickles, sour cream, and borscht—to add flavor to their meals. Thought it might not have been known at the time, fermented foods like sours help boost the immune system and protect our bodies from invading organisms. When sweet, earthy beets became popular and began to dominate the soup’s ingredients, cooks started adding vinegar or fermented beet juice in order to keep the traditional sour flavor intact.

As borscht made its global journey, different bits were picked up or left off along the way. The Slavic version included meat, but the dish was almost always served with a dollop of sour cream, so Jews developed a vegetarian iteration. Since the vegetarian recipe was essentially beets and onions with vinegar and sour cream, the soup became a distinct pinkish purple color. Like its Eastern European cousin the blintz, by the time borscht had spent a few years in Manhattan it was being mass produced and sold in jars.

Here’s the thing, though: somewhere between borscht’s commercialization and the filming of Dirty Dancing, people stopped liking borscht. Maybe it was the jars or the sweetness from added sugar; either way, borscht somehow disappeared. But here we are in the 21st century and everyone loves beets (seriously: beets are so hot right now).

So I propose we take borscht back to its roots, no pun intended. Let’s celebrate the star of this show—the beet—by cooking it in season. A friend of mine has a small urban homestead here in Chicago, and last week she came by and dumped a bag full of pretty little white and pink beets into my very willing arms. These were some happy-looking beets, begging to be treated with love and respect. This salad is inspired by borscht, celebrating its many components with beets, pickled onions, and a little sprinkle of dairy on top. But unlike the smooth soup, the texture provided by the roughly chopped vegetables diminishes the creepiness of their color.


Not Your Bubbe’s Borscht Salad

Ingredients:

3 cups washed, peeled, and diced beets
½ medium onion, peeled and diced
2 tablespoons pickling or Kosher salt
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar
¼ cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon miso
⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper, to taste
Fresh burrata or goat cheese, crumbled (optional)
Chives, minced

Directions:

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Add beets and continue boiling until fork tender. Set aside to cool.

2. While the beets are boiling and cooling, place diced onions in a bowl and add salt, vinegar, and sugar. Place a plate or flat object in the bowl directly on top of the onions and put a weight on it. Let it sit for at least 20 minutes.

3. Whisk together lemon juice, miso, and olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste.

4. When the beets are cold or at room temperature and the onions are pickled, toss the beets and onions in a bowl with the dressing. Fold in the cheese (if using) and chives.

Also try:

Not Your Bubbe’s Deconstructed Baba Ghanoush

Not Your Bubbe’s Pistachio Mandel Bread

Not Your Bubbe’s Savory Cranberry Crunch

The post Not Your Bubbe’s Recipe: Borscht Salad appeared first on Jewcy.